


Shadowboxing

by Masu_Trout



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games)
Genre: Aug Kink, Coming In Pants, Fighting turns into sex, Loyalty, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Sparring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-10
Packaged: 2019-08-21 11:37:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16575710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/pseuds/Masu_Trout
Summary: In the wake of the London attack, Miller's attempt to quiet his nightmares turns into so much more.





	Shadowboxing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DreadlordTally](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreadlordTally/gifts).



> I had a great time with your prompts, I really hope you enjoy!

The Orchid didn't manage to take Miller's life. But it took just about everything else.

For the first few days after that near-disaster of a mission, laid up in a hospital bed in north London, he'd been barely able to breathe. They'd intubated him, poked him full of IV lines, and drip-fed him the strongest meds he'd had in his life while his body struggled to overcome the damage that poison had done to it.

(Sometime around day five, when Miller was finally becoming well enough to feed himself again, his doctor told him he'd been lucky. If the antidote had come only a minute later, if the damage had been just a little bit worse—

_Christ_. He still didn't like to think about it. Miller'd come out of this with a painful new sympathy for ARC's old leader. Whatever the man had or hadn't done in life, no one deserved to die that way.)

Now, months later, TF29's doctors still fussed over him. He shouldn't be back in the office, apparently; he should be sitting at home, resting and relaxing and going out of his goddamn mind.

Not a chance. Not when there was work to be done. And Miller's body might occasionally shake still, but that wasn't the sort of thing waiting around uselessly would cure. He worked his normal hours (ten, twelve, sixteen a day) and he watched over his people and, whenever his own body started to feel like a stranger, he excused himself to TF29's gym and pushed his body until it was ready to _really_ fail on him—until the only noise he could hear were his gasping breaths and his heart pumping strong and steady in his ears, until his muscles burned with lactic acid and exhaustion and everything except that quick-creeping poison.

And, while he was there, he kept running into Adam.

The first time, he'd been taken by surprise; he'd known Adam used the shooting range often, but the gym was another thing entirely. He couldn't imagine Adam, of all people, getting much out of a run on the treadmill or a weightlifting routine. But it did make sense. Mechanical limbs or no mechanical limbs, you didn't get the kind of core strength and flexibility Adam had without a lot of effort. (He'd seen the size of some of the vents Adam crawled through on the regular. There was no amount of money Miller would do that for.) And it probably helped him, too, just like it helped Miller.

(Doctor Auzenne would tell him he was simply projecting onto the man who'd saved his life. But sometimes he thought Adam might occasionally feel the same way that Miller so often felt these days—like his body was some strange, traitorous thing that had failed him once and might now fail him again.)

By now, it had become an odd little routine. He and Adam shared the same bizarre hours. More days than not, he found himself sharing weights and floor space with Adam in an oddly-coordinated dance that left neither of them needing to speak. 

A few times he'd wanted to stop and talk to Adam properly. Thank him, or ask him what the hell he thought was going on with TF29's increasingly-incompetent upper management. Or maybe just rant at him a bit about how badly he wanted to strangle Manderley. Adam was the sort who could keep a secret— _clearly_ , considering how many things he was blatantly hiding from Miller.

(It should've made Miller trust him less. Fuck, Miller should've tossed him out of TF29 the moment he'd seen the logs proving Adam had somehow managed to access the NSN using Miller's identity. But he didn't, and he hadn't. And—he owed Adam his life. That counted for something.)

Professionalism kept his tongue in check. But professionalism could only stretch so far before it broke, and Miller was at his breaking point.

It was eleven at night. He was going to be here until two in the morning, at least, waiting for the latest most-likely-useless field report to come in. His body felt worse than it had in weeks; just yesterday it had almost been _his_ again, but today Miller ordered his hand to move and watched some stranger's stiff fingers skitter across the table to pick up the papers he wanted held. Even the weights weren't enough to make him feel like himself again today.

Maybe that was why he did it. Maybe the Orchid had just knocked some brains cells loose. Wouldn't be the strangest side effect he'd had. All Miller knew was that he turned towards Adam—quiet, still, Adam, who was breathing steadily as the treadmill set the sort of breakneck sprint pace that would have had anyone else in the office gasping for air after half a minute—and thought, _We should fight_.

He'd made been in the habit of sparring, back on the front lines of the civil war; everyone in his unit had. (They'd had a betting ring going and everything, right up until their CO shut _that_ down.) It was a way to get out of your own head for a while without resorting to booze or a cheap fix. And if anyone could push him hard enough to make his body feel like his own again, it would be this man.

"Jensen," he called out, with a casualness he didn't quite feel, "How would you feel about a spar?"

Adam paused in the middle of a set of crunches. Sat up to give Miller a long, puzzled stare. (His eyes were green and bright, artificial gold, more expressive than Miller would have ever guessed. He didn't hide them around Miller anymore. What the hell he _meant_ by letting Miller see them was anyone's guess.)

"...The two of us?" he asked in carefully-hidden tones of disbelief.

Miller didn't bother to dignify that with a response—just gave Adam a sharp, withering look.

"Right now?"

"Why not? We're both here."

That, Adam didn't seem to have an answer to. He glanced around the room—mats in the center making a square-ish sort of arena, soundproofed walls, lockable door—and seemed to find nothing he could complain about. Instead, he turned to look warily at Miller. "It might not be a fair match-up."

" _Obviously_ ," Miller said, baffled. Even at his very peak, years and years ago, he would have fallen far short of Adam's multi-million-dollar body. "Do people really—?" He cut himself off with a tired groan, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. "Never mind, actually. Don't answer that."

Of course they did. Probably even some among TF29's forces here. People distrusted the augmented for breaking down the limitations of the human body, but, in Miller's experience, far too many unaugmented people harbored a quiet, closely-held conviction that _they_ would be the one person able to take down a mugger with steel arms or a merc with superhuman reflexes if it really came down to it. 

He'd have thought The Incident would have cured people of that. Apparently not.

Miller couldn't say he loved the idea of augmentation—he still had nightmares where he woke in that London hospital to a doctor saying, _I'm sorry, sir, we did all we could, but we just couldn't save everything_ and a lump of cold metal in his chest where his heart should have been—but he at least had a healthy respect for it. The things he'd seen in Australia had impressed on Miller the kind of power men like Adam gained in exchange for their flesh.

"Look," Miller said. "One round. No hard feelings."

There was a long, heavy pause before Adam said, "Can I ask why you're so interested all of a sudden?"

Miller twitched fingers (not fingers, _his_ fingers) against _his_ side. 

"I'd rather you didn't," he said, with more honesty than he'd intended. 

Adam sized him up, eyes flicking up and down. For a moment Miller was sure he'd refuse—and then the mirrored shades snapped into a place with a quiet _snick_ of glass against metal, hiding his expression away. "All right. Let's give it a shot."

Miller couldn't help the rush of excitement that burst in him at the sight. He'd needed to slow down, for Susieand Ethan's sakes, he didn't regret leaving the front lines—

—but some part of him had missed this all the same.

Adam shot him a crooked little half-smile, then, there and then gone in an instant. "Don't worry. I'll keep the augs reasonable."

Miller snorted. "What's your definition of reasonable?"

"No Typhoon, for one."

Which was something to be grateful for. Miller had seen the Typhoon in action. He had no desire to experience it for himself.

They cleared a spot in the center of the room in companionable silence, unrolled a few more mats to give themselves extra space to work with. When they finally had a solid square of open, well-padded space under their feet, Adam nodded to himself.

"Ready?" he asked as he moved towards one corner of the mats.

He was wearing an old, off-black tee and a set of loose pants. They were long enough to cover his arms and legs, but they clung to the lines of his augmented limbs and showed off more than his trench coat combo ever had. Miller couldn't help but glance at them. He wondered, sometimes, what they felt like. Did they run hot or cold? Were they as sleek to the touch as they looked?

No time to think about that now. He needed to focus. 

"Ready," Miller said, shifting into a familiar stance. 

At first, it was as if he hadn't spoken at all; Adam's didn't move, didn't so much as react—and then, all at once, he lashed out with blurring speed, dropping to a crouch and aiming a fist towards Miller's torso.

Miller's heart jumped into his chest as he darted backwards, twisting out of the way a millisecond before the blow would have landed. His heart was in his throat, his pulse was quick as a jackhammer. Adam _wouldn't_ hurt him, he knew that, but—he could have. In a real fight, with lives on the line... if Miller had been a heartbeat slower, a strike like that would have crushed his ribcage.

_Fuck_ , Adam was fast. Hearing about it in a mission report didn't compare to seeing it firsthand.

No time to think. To hesitate. Indecision would freeze him if he let it. This wasn't the strict, regimented spars they'd done as military practice. Wasn't the chaotic brawls he'd known back when he was young, either. Adam fought like he wasn't even human.

Miller sidestepped on sheer instinct, just barely avoiding a grab, savored the shock written in the twitch of Adam's mouth. _Sparring wasn't such a ridiculous idea now, was it?_ he thought as he kicked the side of Adam's kneecap (and _damn_ was that sturdy design, the way his toes were stinging, he could have easily fractured every one of them pulling that stunt) hard enough to force him to pull back or be knocked off balance.

This wasn't in Miller's favor. He was dodging, darting. Making like a hare weaving back and forth in the path of a hound. Miller couldn't compete with the sheer unyielding power in those mechanical limbs. The moment Adam got hold of him, this fight would be over.

There was no way he'd win this in a test of strength. Which meant he'd have to turn the tables.

Adam was hanging back now. Waiting to see if Miller would take the bait and rush on in. Miller just offered him a wry twist of his mouth— _you don't think I'm that stupid, do you?_ —and got an answering scowl from Adam. 

No, he hadn't expected Miller would fall for that. Adam was too smart to underestimate him that way. But he'd had to try all the same. Miller would have done the same thing in his position.

(It felt _good_ , didn't it, to be on the field again with someone who understood him so easily, so intimately. Even if this was nothing more than a practice match on a set of worn mats in a cramped workout room in the secret basement of a government front—it felt amazing.)

With his ruse no longer an option, Adam closed the distance once more. He twisted around to box Miller in, lashed out to try and grab hold of shoulder or collar and reel him closer.

Miller should have ducked and gained some space. Instead, he lunged forward. Savored the look of surprise he got as he took hold of Adam's arm, just below the wrist, twisted the metal joint there—

and watched in sudden, shocked awe as Adam's wrist _turned_ to block his attack, entire hand twisting 180 degrees so his palm faced straight back and then bending impossibly far. His fingers wrapped around Miller's where they were wrapped around Adam; with one sudden pull he broke Miller's hold—and very nearly his wrist with it—and with a fluid step forward grabbed hold of Miller's shoulders and slammed him bodily to the mats.

Miller wheezed when he hit, stars blooming and popping behind his eyelids. He rolled, fighting to gain distance and a chance to regroup, but he didn't expect it to work and he wasn't surprised when his escape was cut off by a crushing pressure pinning him down.

He lashed out with a left hook, textbook-perfect; Adam caught his wrist and slammed it down against the mat above his head. Miller kicked blindly, hoping for a lucky blow and hitting only metal, and hissed in frustration when Adam forced Miller's leg flat with his own foot. One or two more increasingly-sloppy attempts at an escape had him helpless, finally, pinned at all four limbs, gasping shallowly for air with his back against the mat and Adam's shielded eyes staring him down.

Adam had outclassed him completely. And he knew that was the _point_ , that you didn't give up your eyes and your heart and every goddamn limb you had if it didn't offer you a serious advantage in return, but right now all he could feel was his own humiliating weakness. Miller would have gone down to Adam no matter what—the man was a walking tank—but he shouldn't have gone down so quickly or been so winded from the short scuffle. 

Before London, he would've lasted longer. For a moment it was as if he could feel the Orchid burning in his lungs again— _take a breath, another, another, try not to think about how every single one is bringing you closer to your death_ —and he bit down on his lip to force back the dizzying surge of panic. 

"Yield?" Adam asked.

Of course he yielded. It wasn't as if he could move like this. But he paused a moment, still, trying to catch his breath, trying not to focus on Adam's sleek arm pressed against his throat and his weight pinning Miller's hips down. Trying not to hear Adam's harsh breath in his ear, the warmth of it puffing against Miller's cheek—

"Yield," Miller.

Adam was still for one long second, then another, looking inscrutably at him through the mask of his ocular implants, and then he nodded and let go of Miller all at once. He flopped backwards onto the mat behind him; Miller watched with a strange sort of amazement as his wrist spun back around to its normal position with a soft mechanical whirr.

"I didn't know you could do that."

He hadn't meant to comment. Anyone who knew Adam could tell he was closed-off about his enhancements. Miller'd never been able to tell if it was a reaction to others' prejudice or just his natural inclination, but he knew better than to pry. It was harder than it should have been to keep his professional barriers up in the face of Adam's quiet loyalty.

Adam shrugged, staring down at his own hands with a vague sort of embarrassment. "Yeah. It's a bit..." He cut off whatever he'd been planning to say after a moment's pause, instead adding, "But it's useful."

"It's impressive," Miller said. 

Adam was looking at him. "Right," he said.

"You don't think so? I don't know anyone else on the team who could do that." Even Argento's augmentations didn't have that range of movement, as far as he knew.

"It's not that. I just... like I said, it's—useful."

It hit Miller then, with a belated burst of clarity, that Adam wasn't embarrassed because of the situation, or because he felt bad about laying his boss out on the mat so quickly. It was the augmentations that had him acting oddly; his hands hovered in his lap with a strange sort of hesitation. Like he wanted to hide them. Like he was regretting ever having shown Miller in the first place.

That—that couldn't stand. TF29 was partnering up its agents more and more these days, now that Miller's own brush with death had shown them all how deadly going it alone could be. It wouldn't do if Adam were to hesitate on a mission just because he didn't feel comfortable using his augmentations around a teammate. 

(Not that Adam had ever shown hesitation before. Not that he was likely to end up on team missions in the first place, with how how suited for solo stealth ops his body was. But something in Miller rebelled at the idea of Adam hiding his capabilities away, regardless of any mission importance.

Adam had saved his life. Saved a few hundred other lives, too. It wasn't _right_ for him to be ashamed of the parts of him that had helped him accomplish that.)

Running on pure, stupid instinct, Miller reached out a hand. Brushed his fingers against Adam's strange, glossy wrist and—before Adam could have the chance to pull away—asked, "Can I see?"

"What?" Adam asked. His fingers twitched, but his hand remained steady and still against Miller's.

Miller scowled. _Fuck_. What was he doing? This could only end badly. He knew that. "I," he said, and then, "your hand. You talked like there were other things you could do. I'm curious." 

"Yeah. I'm a regular Swiss Army knife." The arch of his eyebrow could be amusement or aggravation. Hard to tell with his eyes hidden.

Miller took a breath and forged on, stupidly. "Like you said. It'd be useful."

The corner of Adam's mouth quirked up as Miller threw his own words thrown back at him. "I mean," he said, "you have my schematics on file, don't you?"

TF29's _schematics_ on Adam were fifty-five pages of freehand technical diagrams accompanied by David Sarif's incomprehensible scrawl. There wasn't a human being alive who could decipher them, save one; Miller often suspected the man had made them useless on purpose just in case they ever fell into hands like TF29's.

Miller shrugged. "It's not really the same."

With a twist of his head, Adam stared Miller down. His shades retracted once more, and suddenly Miller was looking straight into Adam's eyes. There was wariness reflected in them, a flat sort of apathy that was the sign of hastily-covered-over fear. (Miller had wondered, when they first met, what a man could possibly need _sunglasses augmentations_ for. He didn't wonder anymore; Adam was shockingly bad at hiding his emotions without them.)

"All right," Adam said. With a touch of amusement, he added, "If you really think it'll help the mission."

So neither of them bought Miller's awful excuse. Wonderful.

Adam spread his hand flat, letting Miller rest his own hand on Adam's palm—and then Adam's fingers _split_ , pinky and thumb sliding to point down towards his wrist, all his fingers sliding open at the knuckles and elongating as they flexed. Like a dead spider curled up on its back.

Miller jumped. He couldn't help it. Some animal instinct in his brain had snapped to attention, and now it was screaming at him that fingers _didn't move that way_.

He forced past the reaction, angry he'd let it show in the first place. Adam was going him a favor, showing this off. He deserved better than his boss acting like a rookie scared of his own shadow. Miller firmed up his grip, tracing along the new, alien shape of his hand.

Adam made a quiet noise when Miller slid his thumb up the outside of an elongated joint. 

Miller looked up. "Shit. Sorry. Does that hurt?"

There was a spot of color high on Adam's cheeks. No way it would be noticeable to anyone who'd spent less time around Adam than Miller had. "No," he said, sounding embarrassed, "just... odd." He flexed his fingers experimentally, pressing them closer against Miller's hand with the movement. "It's a different sensation with actual skin."

Of course, Miller realized. Strange. He'd never really thought about it much; Adam's hands both being augmented had to change the sensation of not just touching, but being touched as well. 

An image rose in Miller's mind, then, as sudden as it was unbidden: Adam flat on his back with Miller kneeling astride him, mouth half-open as Miller mapped out the joints of his shoulders, his biceps, each delicate finger—

_Oh, fuck_ , Miller thought, jerking his hand away from Adam like he'd been burned. _Fuck_.

He forced back his shock, schooling his face into something approaching normalcy. But not quickly enough.

Adam was looking at him. His eyes were focused, sharp, intent in a way Miller couldn't read. His fingers, as Miller watched, snapped back into place to become part of a normal hand once more.

_Shit_. A slow, crawling humiliation curled its way into the pit of Miller's stomach. He might not know all Adam's various upgrades, but he was more than familiar with the CASIE. There was no chance he wouldn't be able to read Miller with that. Right now he was looking at Miller, taking note of his heartbeat and his pulse and his breathing and putting it all together to get a picture that spelled out—

Miller stood. Scrambled to his feet, really, even as aware as he was of how that shakiness would look. "Jensen," he said, hideously off-kilter, and then cleared his throat and tried again. "I need to get back to work." A moment's thought before he chanced adding, "Thank you. For sparring with me."

Adam's mouth opened. For a moment it looked as though he might argue. And then his head tilted to the side, a response to some information being fed to him by his mechanically-aided brain, and he said, quietly, "Okay. Maybe some other time?" 

_Say no,_ Miller thought. _Make it easy._ Adam, of all people, wouldn't hold his refusal against him.

"Sure," he said, "another day," and then he was grabbing his towel and his water and fleeing to the safety of the TF29's cramped little subterranean locker room. Thinking, all the while, of Adam.

\---

Adam didn't take a step into the locker room while Miller was in there. He slipped in once Miller had left, then slipped back to his desk while Miller was at his, and then slipped out of the office while Miller was busy being yelled at by Manderley for the third time this week. Even without the augmentations, he could be a hard man to get ahold of once he'd decided to make himself scarce.

So Adam didn't want to talk about it, it seemed. That was... good. A better outcome than Miller could have hoped for. They were both adults, after all; Miller would take control of this stupid little whatever-it-was that he'd apparently gone and developed, and in return Adam would do him the courtesy of not mentioning his unprofessional behavior to anyone else in the office.

Some kind of transference, he told himself. That was all. He'd read about it before, in one of the hospital pamphlets he'd turned to paging through after hour upon hour of being bedbound: patients who'd gone through a traumatic incident often found themselves falling for the therapists they credited with rescuing them. And saving Miller's life had to be enough of a _rescue_ to count. 

(He would've asked Dr. Auzenne about the mechanics of it, but he was too busy dodging anything that might end up with him on her couch. She very obviously wanted to talk to him about the Orchid, dig through the memories and find a new and improved Miller to paper back over the broken version TF29 was stuck with now, but he just—couldn't. It was all so raw.)

So it made sense. And—if the hurried, panicked research he'd done the moment he was back at has computer was true—it would fade sooner or later.

(He just needed not to think about how he'd felt when Adam had stepped into that industrial kitchen in London, the way everything had suddenly seemed _safer_ just from the fact of his presence; the quiet surety of Adam's presence by his bedside in the London hospital, night after night staying until the nurses threw him out; the open warmth in his eyes when he finally stopped hiding them. Those things didn't matter. They weren't worth dwelling on.)

Perhaps it would have been easier if Adam had kept avoiding him, but after that first awkward day he seemed content to pretend like nothing had changed between them. He stopped by Miller's office to talk tactics or share news; he nodded at him whenever they ended up by the coffee machine at the same time. He was even content to continue sharing the gym with Miller, though neither of them brought up the idea of sparring again.

Perhaps, on his end, it hadn't. The CASIE meant he had to pick up on all kinds of hidden emotions—Miller's little gaffe couldn't be the worst thing he'd ever accidentally read off of someone. Maybe this was business as usual for him. He was attractive enough; he probably had people interested in him like that on a regular basis. (Which would be a good thing, Miller reminded himself, angry at the way the thought sent a hot rush of jealousy through him. Adam deserved someone open, and kind, and without the hellish sort of baggage _certain_ people working at TF29 carried.) 

So Miller tried his best to keep things normal too. It would've been easier if every subconscious part of him hadn't suddenly decided to regress back to the level of a teenager with an embarrassing first crush all at once. 

And it would have been easier, too, if he could stop remembering those first few days after the spar, when his body had been alight with nerves and humiliation and his again, all his. The feelings of depersonalization had begun creeping in again, badly enough that people were beginning to notice, and every time he caught himself staring at his hand like it were someone else's or pacing circles in his office to try and connect the sensation of walking with the understanding that it was _his_ legs moving him, he ended up entertaining ideas he shouldn't. Ideas like, _He offered another spar, it wouldn't be wrong to just ask him..._

He wouldn't. He couldn't. 

He didn't need to, as it turned out, because Adam took care of it for him.

\--

1:29 AM, the aftermath of a mission that had only just barely avoided complete disaster. Everyone who could had left the moment they'd heard word of the mission's success—the only ones left in the office were the night crew attached to their computers down below and Miller, who was busy filing paperwork that could wait until tomorrow because sitting in his office and trying not to think about how badly he'd fucked up was better than staring at his cold apartment ceiling and thinking about how badly he'd fucked up.

This was the worst part of his job: watching helplessly from safety as while good men and women risked their lives, knowing that a better leader could have made things easier on them.

Mission intel always seemed to come in too late these days, too late or wrong or completely fucking useless. As tempting as it was to blame Manderley or the other higher-ups at TF29, Miller knew the fault for a mission-gone-wrong could only ever lie at his feet. Miller was the director. These people were his responsibility. 

He was sitting there, staring at a requisition request and comprehending none of it, when a soft mechanical _whoosh_ heralded his door opening.

Miller looked up. 

"A- _Jensen_ ," he said, "What the hell are you doing still here?"

He never knew what to call the man these days. He thought of him as _Adam_ , but forced himself to keep to the same strict professionalism he used for everyone else here. The way they'd spoken to each other on the London mission had been a fluke. (For Miller's sake, it needed to stay one.)

"I could ask you the same question." His sunglasses had slid away at the same time as the door, and he was staring at Miller with an eyebrow raised and an expression uncomfortably close to sympathy.

"I have work to do. Not all of us can afford to let our paperwork stack up." 

Adam was far from the worst when it came to that, but it was an easy jab. 

"Mm-hmm," Adam said drily. He grabbed a stack of Miller's papers, moved them aside, and then—without so much as asking permission—perched himself on the corner of Miller's desk. His fingers lay against the wood of the desk, reflecting the low light in odd geometric patterns. "I used to head a team myself," he said, gently. "It wears on you."

Miller screwed his eyes shut. He did forget, sometimes, how much of a downgrade this place had to be from _Head of Security at Sarif Industries_ , but this was also the last goddamn thing he wanted to talk about right now.

"Look," he snarled, "if I wanted to discuss this, I'd be calling Doctor Auzenne. Not _you_."

It came out harsher than he'd meant it, but Adam didn't rise to the bait. Just nodded once, slowly, as if his own boss losing his fucking temper over being shown the tiniest little gesture of goodwill wasn't anything he ought to feel insulted over, and said, "That's fair. But I'm not leaving until you leave."

Miller looked up at Adam, searching for a hint that he was anything less than serious, and found only steely determination in his eyes. He groaned. "You treat all your bosses this way?"

The corner of Adam's mouth twitched. "This may come as a shock, but I have been accused of being a stubborn asshole once or twice."

"Stop the presses. So, what's your grand plan for dragging me out of here, then?" He eyed Adam's arms, thinking of the sculpted, better-than-human metal and nanofiber muscles that the trench coat hid. "And let me warn you, if it's literally dragging me out of here, you should bring the contents of your desk with you while you're at it."

"I was thinking we could try for another spar, actually." 

Miller stopped. His hands felt suddenly frozen around where he was holding his papers. A flush was rising across the back of his neck.

Adam's eyes were intent, but warm. Despite what he had to be reading off him right now, there was nothing mocking in the way he looked at Miller—just the hint of a promise.

A promise not to mention what had happened during that first spar, Miller wondered, or..?

"I... I'm not sure I'm up for one, after how today's been," he admitted. It had the advantage of being honest, and he wasn't saying _no_.

(He should've been, he knew, but—)

"Drinks, then?"

"Excuse me?"

Adam shrugged. "You don't want to talk about it. So we won't."

God, a drink sounded good right now. And not drinking alone sounded even better. Together they were appealing enough to drown out the little voice in the back of his head that was telling him that he shouldn't go out drinking with subordinates, and he _especially_ shouldn't go out drinking with subordinates he couldn't get out of his head.

Miller said, "Okay, sure. A beer would be nice."

The way Adam grinned, then—small, but relaxed, like getting Miller to go somewhere with him was a genuine pleasure—made something twist in the pit of Miller's stomach. 

He knew what it was. He wasn't going to name it.

\--

The problem with going out to drink at two in the morning in Prague was that there was nowhere to go. Though the curfew was no longer in effect, the city's nightlife had yet to recovered. The only place that might offer a drink to mixed company like them—Jim as blandly Natural-with-a-capital-N as they came, Adam's augmentations all but screaming their presence to the rooftops every time he so much as moved—was the Red Light District, and that...

Well, that would be a very bad idea. For a multitude of reasons.

Before long, they found themselves standing at a street corner, staring up at the overcast sky as the silence stretched long and awkward between them. It was March, but winter seemed reluctant to give up its stranglehold on Prague; the air was achingly cold.

Miller blew on his hands, wishing he'd brought gloves. Adam, the bastard, didn't need to bother.

"Well," Adam said finally.

Miller knew what he was going to suggest next. Adam had tried, after all, gone well and above what was courteous in his stubborn attempt to keep his boss from being miserably alone tonight. Time to call it quits.

Before Adam could continue, Miller said, "We're near my apartment." 

_Fuck_. Miller winced. How much of an idiot could one man be? Apparently he was desperate to find out.

"Oh?"

Miller continued on, foolhardily, with, "I have a few bottles tucked away. It's not anything fancy, but..."

Adam surprised him with a nod. "If you're sure," he said. "That sounds—good."

He could turn back now. Rescind the offer, send Adam home.

Miller swallowed. "Of course I'm sure."

He led them over the streets of Čistá Čtvrť towards his apartment. Adam seemed impressively sure-footed, making each turn too quickly to actually be following Miller's lead—but then, he had some sort of fancy mapping software in those glasses, didn't he? He probably had all of Prague laid out for him wherever he walked.

As they approached the building, Miller slowed. He hadn't been thinking when he invited Adam over. Of course it wasn't _forbidden_ to have someone augmented stay at Nº 33—the landlords here would never be so bold in their bigotry—but a fair few of his neighbors were gossips and insufferable assholes both. He didn't want Adam to have to deal with some idiot calling the police. And he had no idea how to say, _Hey, would you mind being extra quiet up the stairs? Anyone could see you from the courtyard._

Before he could open his mouth, though, Adam's sunglasses retracted. His eyes gleamed bright even in the low light. His smile was the same as the one he'd given Miller right before he jumped out of a plane without a warning or a parachute for the first time. 

"Go up to your apartment," he said, "and I'll show you what _unreasonable augs_ looks like."

Miller shivered at the reminder of that first spar.

"If this involves the Typhoon—"

Adam put a hand to his mouth to cover a cough that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. "No Typhoon. Promise."

He eyed Adam a moment more, caught between interest and a creeping certainty that Adam was going to drive him to an early heart attack, and said, "...All right. One moment."

He walked into his building so fast it was almost a run. Took the stairs two at a time, unheeding of the way his Orchard-scarred lungs burned as he sucked in the cold air, and stumbled into his apartment. He was excited. Stupid of him, but he was.

As he took his first step inside, he wasn't quite sure what he was meant to be doing. (Adam wouldn't use this as an excuse to leave, that would just be bizarre, but what _could_ he be planning?)

And then, only seconds later, he heard it: a knock, soft but unmistakable, coming not from the door behind him but from the floor above.

_Absolutely not_ , Miller thought. 

Another knock, another, each of them more distinct. And then Miller was stomping up his stairs to his loft, turning the corner to see—

A dark shape silhouetted in his window, its figure lit by the glow of the Palisade Blades across the Vltava River. It looked like a hunching, looming gargoyle, or like a man who'd just scaled the building to his third-story window as fast as Miller could walk upstairs.

Miller crossed the room and yanked his window open. "How the _hell_ ," he demanded, scowling at Adam where he was perched on the sill with just the toes of his shoes gripping to the thin ledge.

Adam gave him a small, crooked smile. "Magicians, secrets. You know how it goes." 

There were bars across Miller's window, wrought-iron and twisted into decorative patterns, the best security this apartment complex could buy while still looking presentable from the street. Adam didn't even hesitate at them; he just used the curve of the lowest shape to push himself higher and shimmied through one of the larger gaps like a cat.

(Landed on his feet too. What the hell.)

He took a moment to brush the sleeves of his fancy coat, checking for rips or tears, then straightened up to meet Miller's eyes. "So," he said, looking more pleased with himself than he ever did after a successful mission, "about that drink?"

Right. Right the drink. Miller had bottles and bottles downstairs, he could offer Adam whatever the hell he preferred. (Better than drinking it all alone.) But some part of him was itching again; the soldier in him had taken one look at Adam—his body just barely clinging to that ledge, hanging over concrete and oblivion as he talked to Miller with an unconscious, careless ease—and thought, _Yes_.

(He knew about the Icarus. Knew damn well that _certain death_ meant something very different to Adam than it did to most of humanity. Didn't make the thrill of watching him any less potent.)

"Actually," Miller said, voice hoarse and rough and nervous, "I was thinking, first—what would you say to having that spar after all?"

"Are you trying to get your neighbors to hate you?" 

"There's one below me but storage space and courtyard." Miller shrugged. "And the walls are thick."

Adam gave him a slow, curious look. Miller tried to meet it, tried not to look away, even as it morphed into something more focused.

(He was projecting. He had to be. Sad, lonely divorcee clinging to the man who'd saved his life—flip Adam's gender, age them both down a decade, and it could be one of the insufferable movies that Picus's American branch loved to play on repeat around the holidays. He'd once spent a long, lonely Christmas stuck in a St. Louis hotel on call for the US branch of TF29, flipping through them on repeat. And now, apparently, he'd decided to try living one.)

"All right," Adam said slowly. "Here?"

"Downstairs," Miller decided. "We'll clear a space."

Fewer things to break down there. And it was farther from the bed.

\---

Adam didn't comment as Miller cleared away the two chairs, the game console with four controllers, or the not-insignificant number of empty bottles he'd left on chair backs and tables. He did, however, spend a moment staring unhappily at the Picus newsfeed Miller'd left on at low volume the last time he left the house before reaching out and, with a twist of his hand against thin air, turning the TV off.

"You have a _TV remote augmentation_?"

"It also scrambles security cameras," Adam said with a shrug, which—well, fair enough. 

When he finally had a space cleared away, they got themselves ready. Miller stripped his suit coat off, feeling awkward in his button-down and slacks, while Adam folded his trenchcoat neatly over the back of one of Miller's and then kicked his shoes off. 

His feet looked strange, heels boxy and soles too flat. Less of a perfect replica of humanity than the rest of him. Adam caught Miller looking and said, "I might scuff your floors."

Miller waved a hand dismissively. "My deposit's not _that_ important."

They squared off again: Adam standing in front of the TV, Miller closer to the kitchen. There was a strange, loose, dreamlike sort of energy in the air between them, something easy and relaxed and all too comforting. It felt different from any spar Miller had taken part in before—there was no rush of adrenaline, no deep-rooted desire to win that dug past any conscious knowledge he had of how impossible that would be.

It was three in the morning and Adam was over at his apartment and they were going to spar. Because they wanted to, or because it was a way not to talk about the events of the day before, or because it was a precursor to—something. 

Miller cut that line of thought off, looked across at Adam, and said, "Ready?"

Adam finished his version of stretching—which mostly involved his entire forearm splitting open in some dizzying display of mechanics—with a sharp clench of his fist that made his augmentations snap into place. "Ready."

His glasses activated, turning his expression into something cold and unreadable. Before Miller could say another word, he was rushing forward.

It was a familiar opening move. Miller danced sideways once more, quicker this time to adjust to Adam's blinding speed.

Miller was tired. Nerves frayed, senses slow. Adam, on the other hand, was every bit his razor-sharp self. The hem of Miller's shirt slipped between Adam's fingers as he dodged a grab that would have sent him crashing to the floor. 

He had one advantage: Adam was avoiding moves that would do permanent damage, instead opting for a bizarre near-wrestling sort of style focused on bringing him down and pinning him. Miller would have been insulted if he weren't so aware of how necessary that gentleness was. 

That alone wouldn't be enough, though. Even with Adam handicapping himself in this way, Miller simply couldn't compete with this kind of speed and raw power. (He threw a punch that was easily blocked, a kick that jerked away from Adam's body just in time to keep Adam from getting hold of his ankle.) There were no vulnerabilities in Adam's style; or, at least, none that one man, nearing fifty, who'd gone from working as a sniper to working behind a desk could exploit in close hand-to-hand combat. Even if he did manage to find an opening, Adam would close it in a second. 

Unless—

It was a dirty trick. Entirely beneath him. He shouldn't even be considering it.

He had a feeling Adam would appreciate it.

Miller feinted once more, a mirror of the move he'd made last time that had ended with Adam's augmented arms making short work of him. This time, though, when Adam—superhumanly quick Adam, who'd known what move Miller was making almost as soon as Miller did and was more than ready to make him pay for it—lunged out to grab hold of Miller's upper arm to throw him to the ground, Miller slipped.

Bare floor, no mats. His feet went out from under him all at once, leaving nothing but solid, unforgiving ground beneath. He flinched, too slowly, trying to twist enough to keep his exposed head from striking the ground first—

And Adam was _there_ suddenly, fight forgotten, grabbing onto Miller with the sort of gentleness that Miller wouldn't have believed augmented limbs were capable of once.

"Boss," he said, voice flat with tension, "Are you— _shit_!"

Adam's knee joints were strong, but they were still joints. 

Miller kicked viciously at one, toes curled properly to avoid a break, and watched with an incredulous sort of satisfaction as Adam's leg went out from underneath him in a sideways arc. His heel went skidding along the floor, digging little gouges into it as Adam toppled.

Adam twisted to stare at Miller, his face a mask of pure shock. His other leg moved to compensate and keep Adam from falling over entirely. 

It didn't have a chance. Not when Miller was grabbing hold of Adam's collar now, swinging him towards the ground with all the force of his body weight behind the throw.

Adam landed hard and with a hollow sort of reverberating noise that had to be his augs. Miller hit a moment later, making a cage out of his body to stop Adam from springing back up and knocking Miller on _his_ back instead.

Pinned underneath Miller, flat on his back and staring up at the ceiling, Adam laughed. It was a quiet sort of noise, small but genuine, as if he were just as shocked by the sound of it as Miller was. His glasses snapped open, and Miller was confronted by the sight of Adam with his eyes scrunched-up in amusement.

"Betrayed," Adam said, "by my own boss. And here I trusted you."

Even as a joke, having Adam so casually talk about trusting him sent a pleasant shiver down his spine.

"I'm teaching a valuable lesson," countered Miller. "On... situational awareness."

"Mm-hmm."

Miller had Adam's wrists up above his head in a loose, cufflike hold with his knees to either side of Adam's torso. Adam could have used the power in those metal wrists of his and turned the tables at any moment. But he didn't break free. Didn't even try. Just lay there, easy and relaxed, letting Miller's weight on his arms pin him to the floor.

His wrists ran warm. Hotter than human. His legs, too, were twin lines of heat beneath Miller. Were they always like that, or was it only because they'd been fighting? If he pressed his hand against one of those legs, how long would it be until it felt uncomfortable?

Miller frantically pushed that thought away. Better to let this wrap up. Before... before it got too late for drinks. Obviously.

He asked Adam, in the same tone of voice Adam had used when their places had been reversed back in the gymnasium, "Yield?"

And Adam—

Adam didn't say anything. Didn't move. Didn't react, except to flick his eyes up to meet Miller's.

"Adam," Miller said. 

He had to know what Miller was feeling right now. The way his heart was pounding, how hyperaware he was of every single point of contact between him and Adam. The way he was suddenly, humiliatingly, achingly aroused just from having Adam underneath him like this.

God, this was a nightmare. A complete and utter mistake. He needed to make another escape before he made an embarrassment of himself past the point of no return. 

He didn't move.

Adam's lips parted slightly. His hands lay prenaturally still against the floor, making no attempt to break Miller's hold.

If he rested his fingers against Adam's pulse point right now, Miller wondered, what would he feel? If he let his knees stop supporting him, let his body go flush with Adam's...

Miller swallowed. Let go of one of Adam's wrists to instead press his hand against his cheek. 

"Tell me to stop," Miller told him.

Adam didn't speak.

Miller leaned in and kissed Adam.

Just a light, barely-there brush—but the moment their lips touched, it was like a switch flipped. Adam's hands surged up with incredible strength, easily breaking what remained of Miller's hold, to deepen the kiss. One hand went up to cup the side of his head, digging into his hair, and the other clutched desperately at the front of his shirt.

There was nothing yielding in the smooth metal of Adam's hands, none of the softness or give of human flesh. It should have felt strange, but all Miller knew was that he wanted more. He wanted to know how those fingers would feel mapped against every inch of his body. 

(And it was _his_ body right now. Adam's mouth against him had him hyperaware of every part of himself, feeling connected in a way that even the spars hadn't managed.)

Miller let his knees fail him, sat heavily in Adam's lap. And, _fuck_ , Adam was hard too. Miller could feel the line of his cock through his pants. He ground their hips together, relishing the little noise that Adam made against his lips at the movement.

He could come just like this, he realized. Grinding arrhythmically against him, both of them clothed, like he'd traveled thirty years back in time to become a desperate teenager again.

He broke away to pant against Adam's mouth. Adam's eyes were wide, gleaming gold and green, and _god_ he was gorgeous.

"Adam," Miller breathed, "Adam, I—"

He wanted to apologize. To say this was a bad idea. To tell Adam what a fuck-up he was, how many times before he'd managed to ruin his relationships.

"Shh," Adam said, and pulled him back in.

They fucked like that, on the floor of Miller's apartment, with the lights on and their clothes on and both of them too focused on each other to care. (There was a bed upstairs. Hell, there was a couch not three meters away. But untangling himself from Adam would have given common sense a chance to reassert itself, and there was nothing in the world that Miller wanted less.)

Miller slid his hands under Adam's shirt to trace his way up firm, sculpted planes of muscle. He couldn't seem to stop moving, grinding against Adam, leaning in to kiss him before pulling away to whisper barely-coherent things into the shell of his ear—"God, Adam, fuck, you look so good"—and then back to Adam's mouth again. 

His fingers stilled just once, when he slid his hands all the way up the length of Adam's chest and hit circles of oddly-cold metal surrounded by thin mounds of scar tissue. The Typhoon, it had to be; Miller'd known he had it, but it was still a shock to touch it, to realize that even the organic parts of Adam were interwoven with metal. He froze, for just a moment, and then Adam froze too, and Miller—gently, slowly, angry at himself for stopping in the first place—forced his fingers to circle the rim of one of the discs.

"Does it hurt?" Miller asked, watching Adam's reaction. _Did it hurt_ , he'd almost asked, but of course it had. There wasn't a chance in hell someone could have holes carved in their flesh without being in agony.

"No," Adam said. His head tilted back just a fraction more, baring his throat. "Just feels strange."

"Bad strange? Or good strange?"

The moan that slipped from between Adam's teeth when Miller scraped his fingernails lightly across the spot where flesh met metal was answer enough.

After that, Miller was less cautious with his movements. He ran his hands indiscriminately across every inch of Adam that he could get ahold of, organic and augmented alike—the strange, fingerlike strips of metal where arm hooked into shoulder; the wiry implants that made parallel lines in the column of his neck; the crescents that marked his glasses ports; the spots, surprisingly high on his hips, where skin gave way back to augmentation.

At some point, Miller's thigh ended up between Adam's nano-carbon legs, and then Adam used what was undoubtedly some sort of high-tech augmentation to slip a (warm, smooth, _perfect_ ) augmented hand down Miller's slacks to grind mercilessly against his cock. 

Coherent thought went out the window; there was just Adam's body beneath him with his cock hard and thick, Adam making desperate pleading noises, Miller's own barely coherent counterpoints of praise and filthy desire, until finally Adam's hand slid against him just right and he said, " _Oh_."

A clench of heat, a burst of pleasure so sharp and sudden it felt like he'd been struck—Miller dug his hands into Adam's skin as he came, feeling flesh and the faint imprints of metal deep beneath.

_Beautiful_. Every part of Adam was perfect.

Adam was still grinding against him, still needy and on-edge. Miller twisted to give him a better angle, pressed his mouth close to Adam's ear to whisper, "Come on, Adam, let me see you—"

"Fuck," Adam said, panting, wide-eyed, "Fuck, _Jim_ —" and then he came with a quiet little noise, head falling back to thump against the floor as his voice broke on a sob.

Miller crouched there, above Adam's body, not sure if he ought to move closer or pull away.

That was the first time since London that Adam had said his name.

After a few moments, his dilemma was solved by way of Adam taking hold of his collar and dragging him down to lay messily on top of him. They ended up curled up around each other in an awkward sort of posture that was half an embrace and half both of them just being fucking exhausted, Adam with his head tucked in the crook of Miller's neck and Miller with a pit of cold shame growing steadily in his stomach.

( _Fuck_ , Adam was handsome. And kind, and stubborn, and loyal. It would be better if it were regret that Miller was feeling—if he could chalk this up to a failure of character borne of a near-death experience and a bad divorce and a midlife crisis—but even now he couldn't force himself to regret a moment. Adam was under his command. He was Miller's professional responsibility. And if he rolled over right now and asked for a round two, Miller would happily oblige. Or, more likely, destroy his wrung-out body trying.)

"Huh," Adam said eventually. His breath tickled Miller's ear. "Next time we should try and make it to the bed."

He must've felt the way Miller tensed on the words _next time_ , because his arms loosened as he said, "Unless—"

"No," Miller said, too quickly. "No, I didn't mean—"

He paused. Forced himself to take a deep, steadying breath. He didn't want to make a wrong step here. "I'm... interested. I just. I don't want you to feel like this is something you have to do."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "Something _I_ have to do."

"I'm your boss," Miller pointed out. "And don't think I haven't noticed how you've been acting since London."

Staying by his hospital bed, humoring him with that spar, staying late just to find him and drag him away from his own thoughts. It was so easy to see this as another piece of that puzzle; Adam feeling obligated to watch over the man he'd saved.

"I followed you to your apartment," Adam said, sounding less than impressed with Miller's line of reasoning. And then he added, more quietly, "You really think I'm not interested in you?"

"It's not that," Miller said, though he had been... worried, just a little, that he was only being humored. The depth of emotion in Adam's question, the way he'd sounded _hurt_ that Miller might even think it, chased those worries away and replaced them with brand new worries.

"It's just," continued Miller, "If anyone finds out—"

"Too bad no one here's a Head of Security. That'd be useful for keeping things hidden"

" _Ex_ -Head of Security."

"I got let go after millions died and the company folded, not for incompetence." There was no bitterness in Adam's voice, just a bone-dry humor.

Miller squirmed, becoming more and more aware of how sticky and unpleasant his pants were becoming. "Look. We can talk about all of this"—he waved a hand to encompass himself and Adam and how close together they were—"later. Right now, I need a shower. And then that damn drink." If he didn't just fall asleep the moment he was done showering, that was.

Adam glanced towards the door past the kitchen. Said, far too casually, "These kinds of apartments have big showers, don't they?"

Fuck. This man really was going to be the death of him.

"Come on," Miller said, "let's go," but he didn't make any move to get up. He just lay there a while longer and listened to the sound of Adam breathing.


End file.
